updates

Drag Racing is a outstanding Windows Phone 8 game where you can race over fifty different cars down a 1/4 or 1/2 mile strip. You can race against the computer or other Drag Racing players (randomly chosen) in various racing modes.

The game was update the other day to version 1.0.0.7 and adds a Friends option to the race menu where you can go head to head against specific members.

Ciel is a Windows Phone 8 photography app that lets you place a template over your pictures that details your location and current weather. It's a nifty way to show off how nice (or miserable) the weather is where ever you may be. Additionally, Ciel has direct sharing support for Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr to let you share the good (or bad) weather with your friends without having to leave the app.

An update was pushed out this morning for Ciel, lifting it to version 2.7. The most notable change with the update is the addition of Lens integration.

The official Tumblr app has been available on the Windows Phone platform for some time now and the team has now updated the app with 11 more languages. For those not familiar with Tumblr, it's a microblogging service that powers over 100 million blogs. The latest release for Windows Phone is already live on the store.

Transfer My Data is a handy utility app to transfer contacts over Bluetooth from your old phone to your new Nokia Windows Phone. The Nokia app was updated to version 4.1 update and with no change log, the changes aren't as obvious. We are seeing that SMS and Photos can be transferred as well as contacts from supported phones.

When Vampire Rush debuted as a Nokia-exclusive Xbox Windows Phone game at the beginning of April, it won my heart with its mixture of action and tower defense gameplay, humor, and a distinct lack of sparkles. But it did suffer from a couple of broken Achievements as well as a conspicuous lack of the iOS version’s Survival mode. The developers promised a patch, and so I didn’t stress over those issues too harshly in our review.

Not two months later, that patch has arrived. Unfortunately though, applying the update seems to break the game. It crashes on start-up and becomes unplayable. There is a workaround, however: delete the game and reinstall it. You’ll get the updated version, properly working and with some choice improvements.

HTC has rolled out a number of updates for its Windows Phone 8 hardware. Those who own either the HTC 8S or 8X will be able to install new versions of Attentive phone, Beats Audio and Regulatory. What's new in these new releases? We're not entirely sure, unfortunately.

Greed City, the Windows Phone 8 exclusive location-based game from Torchbearcreator Lighthouse Game Studio, seems to be growing almost as fast as a real city. Since we first reported on the game in April, the number of players has jumped exponentially. That surge in players and the businesses they create was slowing down the game (which requires internet connectivity) in a big way.

Thankfully, Lighthouse has just published a major update that increases the speed of checking in to businesses and leaving comments on news feed items tenfold. You can now boot the game up, check in to your businesses, and get on with your day quickly and free of hassle once more.

That’s not all, though. The update adds more than a dozen changes and fixes that each make Greed City just a bit sweeter. And to celebrate the update’s arrival, Lighthouse has released a snazzy new trailer extoling the game’s virtues. See the video and more update details after the break!

Camera Preset+ is a nifty Windows Phone 8 photography app that lets you create custom preset settings for your camera. The app was recently updated to version 1.3 which adds Live Tile support to let you pin presets to your Start Screen.

This option can really come in handy by letting you jump right into the application with the settings you need. Live Tiles for presets can be customized with a descriptive title and custom color.

The popular Instagram client Instagraph was updated just a short while ago to version 2.0 and as promised, Metrogram is now part of the mix. The two apps really didn't become one but rather integrated where you can access Metrogram's features from within Instagraph and visa versa.

The Metrogram integration is only for the Windows Phone 8 version of Instagraph. Windows Phone 7.x users shouldn't feel left out in the cold though.

Liquid Daffodil, the developer behind many popular apps available across the Windows ecosystem, has announced that all apps now support the Klingon text effect. Bing originally unveiled that the service will be 'translating' Klingon. For those of you who aren't too sure what Klingon is, it's a fictional warrior race in the Star Trek universe.

Windows Phone doesn’t lack when it comes to options for a Twitter app. You’re bound to find the right app for you between the official app and the numerous third-party ones. Peregrine is one of those third party Twitter apps that needs deserves a bit more attention, especially after the latest update. Let’s check it out.

Maluuba is a Siri styled app for your Windows Phone 8 device that helps take voice commands to a new level. You can find out what the weather is like, find a restaurant, check movie show times, create reminders and more just by voice commands. Maluuba has announced an update to the app, taking it to version 1.0.2, that brings two new features into the mix that deals with sports and television.

Sports integration for Maluuba allows Windows Phone users to ask for live game scores, see upcoming schedules and see league standing for the NBA, NHL and MLB.

When Cut the Rope: Experiments arrived on Windows Phone last month, fans of the Cut the Rope series were of course pleased to see another installment on our platform. But the sequel’s arrival also reminded us that the first Cut the Rope had yet to receive an update since launch. The original game on Windows Phone had only 275 levels - 75 less than other versions.

As mobile Xbox gamers surely know, Rovio has been busy updating several of its Angry Birds games lately. Now it looks like Russian developer ZeptoLab has decided to join in the fun, because they’ve updated Cut the Rope at last! The update brings our version up to par with the iOS and Android games and gives players a great reason to rejoin Om Nom on his quest for candy.

Memorylage is a photography app for your Windows Phone 8 device that lets you view your photo albums in collage style, create collages, share your photos and use them as your lockscreen collage-styled wallpaper. It's a nice alternative to the native Pictures Hub and was recently updated to version 1.2.

The update brings a handful of new features and performance tweaks. Lockscreen collages can now be automatically generate (you can still manually create them) and updated periodically from your collage library. You can now adjust the margin between images and select which photo albums you want the collage generator to pull the photos from.

Microsoft is pushing out a series of updates for both the Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets.

The updates for the Surface RT addresses the low speaker volume and other stability improvements. The Surface Pro updates deal with improved Wi-Fi connectivity and stability along with a video update to improve Skype performance.

The app, exclusive to the Lumia Windows Phone lineup, allows you to take photos, apply one of a handful of creative filters and then automatically adds the hashtag #2InstaWithLove to the photo, for sharing on your favorite social network.

The slick new Facebook Beta app for Windows Phone, which was released at the end of April, and saw some bug fixes and minor improvements a few days later, has just received its second update. Version 5.0.1.2 doesn't seem to come with a change log at all, so it's not quite clear what exactly is new.

Skype seems to get mixed responses from a lot of you. Microsoft bought the communication giant back in 2011. Since then Windows Phone users have dreamed of a seamless Skype experience on their devices. That hasn’t exactly happened, but it’s still nice to see the app get updates, like it did today.

Microsoft has been busy polishing up Skydrive. Starting today Skydrive will offer a timeline view of your photos to help you navigate through all your images a little more efficiently.

Skydrive users will also see improvements with respect to upload performance (twice as fast) with the Skydrive desktop app and full resolution uploads from your Windows Phone has become available to all markets.